But now there was a girl. Everything about her flew straight into the face of the facts. For a person - a defenseless child - to materialize out of the dark was as fundamentally disturbing as a snowfall in midsummer...It was wrong. It made no sense. Hope was a thing that gave you pain, and that's what the girl was. A painful sort of hope.

The Passage, by Justin Cronin, is the latest to be published in a growing body of literary mainstream SF/Horror stories. It is the story of an apocalyptic plague of vampires that all but wipes out humanity, and the few tired but tough and resourceful humans who survive in the wilderness. In writing it Cronin drew heavily from another master of the genre, Stephen King, especially from his good-versus-evil morality tale, The Stand. I have read a lot of books and short stories this year; this is one of the best so far. The Passage, I am told, is the first of a trilogy. Cronin has me exactly where he wants me; I might as well send him the money for the next two...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..